Hey how about we all stop treating open-source software like a startup company? An open-source project doesn't "die" just because it stops getting updates. If people want updates, they can go download the Cairo source and contribute. Or fork it. But no, it's dead. It's all over. By that logic, humans are "dead" because we haven't evolved extra appendages or more eyes recently.
I agree with you, but that doesn't seem to be what's happening here. It looks like people are contributing, but that the contributors are realizing that the maintainers/leaders have all vanished.
So really there are 3 possible outcomes here:
1. the contributors pressure one of the maintainers to come back,
2. the contributors get in touch with one of the maintainers and convince them to promote some contributors to maintainers, or
3. the contributors fork Cairo, because they can't get a maintainer involved.
The email comes from a contributor, who is effectively saying "last call for (1) or (2), and then I'm doing (3)".
Forking is the ideal solution here. Leave Cairo what it is and continue development in the direction you want. In time those changes can be merged back in if the orginal project continues.
The issue with forking is that you take on a lot more responsibility than you did by submitting a PR.
Many of the people submitting PRs probably already contribute to projects that depend on Cairo. They may even maintain those projects. They may not have spare bandwidth to take on the maintenance of Cairo too.
